Clinton Alienates Ufo Group

Protest Set

July 1, 1993|By Anne Groer, Sentinel Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Just in case Bill Clinton doesn't have enough worries - what with Iraq, the tax bill and the discovery of a new half-brother - he is now being accused of lying about space aliens and unidentified flying objects.

Operation Right to Know plans to picket the White House on Monday to urge Clinton to declassify all government documents about aliens and their craft, including reports on the 1947 crash of a UFO in the New Mexico desert and 1987 sightings in the Florida Panhandle.

''UFOs are real,'' said Ed Komarek, whose group claims 160 U.S. members and a chapter in Argentina. ''They are extraterrestrial. And the president, the military and the intelligence agencies are fully aware of it and we want the president to tell the American people the truth.''

Roy Neel, White House deputy chief of staff, wasn't too concerned at the prospect of another protest.

''I have seen Elvis in the sky over my house, so I do believe that he is probably up there lying around in a spaceship,'' Neel said.

Warming up for their White House protest, about 16 right to know members Wednesday picketed The Washington Post, claiming the newspaper was part of a conspiracy of silence to keep the truth about flying saucers and aliens from the American public.

''We are looking into it,'' said managing editor Bob Kaiser, who seemed both surprised and baffled by the marchers he encountered as he left the building for lunch.

''You have to be brain dead if you don't have the faintest inkling that there are aliens operating on this planet,'' group spokeswoman Elaine Douglass said.

The only protester who said he actually saw a UFO was accountant Stanley Tralins, 66, of Layhill, Md., who described seeing ''an alien object that was disc-shaped with the lights flashing for perhaps 30 to 60 seconds'' shortly before midnight about four or five years ago.

Douglass said the group asked Clinton for a meeting in June and ''we got back a form letter saying thank you very much, we will keep your point of view in mind.''